Why do you care about the opinion of others?

Sal Jefferies: 00:00:06

Welcome to Mindset, Mood and Movement.

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A systemic approach to human

behaviour, performance and wellbeing.

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How psychological, emotional and

physical health are all connected.

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In this episode I'll be sharing my

knowledge and experience to help you

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overcome a challenge that you might

be facing in life, health or work.

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hello and welcome.

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Are you worried what

other people think of you?

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Why do we give so much energy

to the opinion of others?

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Now this is an innately human

pattern and it comes up for, for

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many of us in many different guises.

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And in this episode, I'm going to

talk about it when it's kind of

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maladaptive, a problem and stopping you.

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It's something I come across numerous

times in my coaching practice

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and it's normally one of the.

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belief patterns, behavioral patterns that

causes a huge block in people's lives.

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But it's important.

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Now, if this goes back a long way,

some of you may know Marcus Aurelius,

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the, uh, the famous Roman emperor and

philosopher who wrote, uh, meditations.

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So this is going back a

couple of thousand years.

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And he said, we all love ourselves more

than other people, but care about their

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opinions more than our own, whether

they're friends, strangers or enemies.

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So this is a innately human

patterns been going on a long time.

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Which makes us hopefully think a bit

deeper like, well, it serves something

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much more deep, powerful and necessary.

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So I'm going to share a story

about a client I've worked with.

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Obviously it's, um, I'm going to alias

the client, so for confidentiality.

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But I want to explain this because if

you are struggling and if you overly

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think and worry what other people

think of you, this could hold you back.

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Now I work with, we'll call him Joe.

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Joe was a super high level professional,

uh, highly intelligent, had a

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family, uh, been working in, uh,

the, the sector of finance for a

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long time and was doing really well.

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So, so one would say from the

outside, you know, money is

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coming in success in the corporate

space, but she was disillusioned.

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She was going to work and just finding an

emptiness and joking to my practice to,

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to talk through about change, about how

to move from this, you know, unhappy life.

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So really that's what it was.

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Yes, she had the money.

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Yes, she had the what seemed

like external validation and

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success, but she wasn't happy.

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She wasn't fulfilled.

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And that's no way to live.

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So we thankfully she came to me

and we were working through this.

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So the first thing that I got really

interested in was, you know, ask

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the question, what's at stake?

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Why does this opinion of others matter?

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Why can't you leave this job that

you're kind of, you're feeling

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like you can't for some reason.

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She wanted to go into creating her

own business with a very creative

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edge and why was this not happening?

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So we did a lot of work and so

much was coming out and this

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is, this is a general theme now.

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This is so much about grouping.

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Connection, sharing.

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We human beings are groupers.

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Yeah, we're like selves

that come together.

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Everyone, even those of us

who like to be different.

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We like to be with our mates

who are also different.

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You know, whether you're a

skateboarder, a tech person,

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entrepreneur, skier, doesn't matter.

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You'll always find someone like you,

even if you're the different group.

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We look at cities, you know, people come

together as cities and groups of people.

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We are magnetized by the

people and it matters.

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And this goes back a long way,

and this is what I brought to

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the, to the work we did with Joe.

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If we go back to his early roots, humans

are incredibly good at functioning

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together with social species.

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We're not that powerful as an animal

compared to, say, lions and bears

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and, you know, those big powerful

animals, but we're very clever.

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We've always had high level

understanding of how to work

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as, as, as a team, as a pack.

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And, and over those early formations

of our ancestors, we understood

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that working together was paramount.

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And of course, the opposite goes true.

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If we are alone, if we are

out of the group, that is

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potentially a fatal situation.

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Now, over the years, we've come

to know this experience and this

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feeling, this emotional feeling

in us, and it's called shame.

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It's when we are cast out.

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Or in our culture, we

often call it an outcast.

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We're out of the group.

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Now this would have made a lot of

sense going back a long way and let's

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say the hunter gatherer, , times , and

how that might've been in today's

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world with tech, properties, cars, the

culture we live in, it's not quite as.

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is damaging to not be part of the group.

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And yet those early

formations still apply.

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We are still wanting

to be part of a group.

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And to be out of our group

is, tantamount to death.

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So its roots are deep.

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They're deep wired in our neurology,

they're deep wired in our ancestry.

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So when we come to the present day

question like, Oh, why do I care

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so much what my other half thinks?

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Or what my mum and dad think?

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Or what someone on LinkedIn

or Instagram thinks?

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It's not so much the surface impact.

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It's the deep impact.

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It's this deeply innate trigger.

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I suppose we could say that this

could be very, very dangerous for us.

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Now the issue here is.

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It's maladaptive.

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That's a great response back in

the day, if you're, I don't know,

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in the drive having to survive.

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In today's world, you can get

your food delivered to the house.

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You don't need to worry

about that sort of thing.

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Most of us, hopefully, live in a

fairly safe and structured property

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and, we don't have to worry about,

animals around us hurting us.

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But the response remains and

now it's become very abstract.

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So when we think of Joe who was struggling

to find the depth and happiness in life

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and move on from her career and create

something powerful and wonderful and be

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fulfilled in a, in the entrepreneur world.

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The belief block was there.

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It was holding her back.

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So we did a lot of work around the

explanation as I'm doing now, but the

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feeling, what does it feel like when

you are, , pushing on the edge when you

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believe that people won't accept you?

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Uh, and there's a term

for this, which is pariah.

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Tough word, but that's, that's a

term that's often used in English.

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You're a pariah.

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You are out there.

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You're not part of the group.

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And what I find fascinating is this

maladaptive process and worrying what

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other people think of us can actually

transition from pariah to outlier.

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Now an outlier is an interesting one.

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It's a more common term.

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You may be aware of it.

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Outlier links us to pioneer.

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leader, forward thinker,

courageous person.

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And it's interesting, isn't it?

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That we got to have this internal

emotional psychological shift from

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the fear and belief of being a

pariah to shift into an outlier.

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And I would say an outlier in

the space I work with helping

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people make their own decisions.

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It's the place to be.

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So the question is, how do we tap into

that authentic voice that's within

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that authentic voice that's within you

that says, I want to do this, but I'm

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worried about other people's think.

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And it comes from a very

important state of making peace.

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with several things.

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Making peace with the fact that

you can't make everyone happy.

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And that's a fool's errand.

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Sometimes we'll do things, even if

we don't mean to, which might upset

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someone, even if we don't mean to.

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So we get very caught up in this

attachment to others, and there

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lies an opportunity to shift.

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So when we start to check in with some

important learnings here, and I'm going

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to share four that I see was really

helpful, and I shared this with Joe.

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So the insight number one, and I learned

this years ago, I had a coach that said

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to me about this and they said how often

do you spend thinking about other people?

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And I'm used on the question for a

while and I thought, not that long.

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I spend more time thinking about

myself, my own internal experience.

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And she was like, yeah, exactly right.

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We all spend most of our thinking and

feeling time connected with us, the I.

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We're not bothered about

other people that much.

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We just don't care.

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We care about ourselves.

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So here's the freedom in that.

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If people don't really care that

much about what we're doing, they're

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not that bothered, then we can be

liberated from the fear of that.

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So that's the first understanding.

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Second, understand that these

are instinctual responses, and an

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instinctual response to avoid shame

of being cast out is utterly natural.

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but quite likely completely out of

whack with where you're at today, the

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circumstance you find yourself in.

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So for Joe, it was saying to a

partner, look, I'm so disillusioned.

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I've got to do something well in my life.

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This is going to damage everything if I

keep pretending to be okay with this job.

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And by talking it through and saying,

look, you know, I have to do this.

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I know you may not, you're nervous,

you're worried, but I have to do this.

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But then suddenly that, that.

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Elegance of communication and

authenticity meant that the people that

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were doubting and were uncomfortable

still, still kind of said, well,

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okay, look, okay, we get it.

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I'll support you.

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So expressing, understanding and

knowing that instinctual response,

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but expressing in the real world

is the second big thing to shift.

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Thirdly, and this really worked with, with

Joe, is avoid being part of the problem.

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Stop judging yourself.

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Stop judging others as much as you can.

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Avoid the process of judgment.

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And the reason for this,

it's a perceptual thing.

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It's a psychological perceptual shift.

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What we pay attention to is what we see.

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So if we are conscious or unconscious

and judging how we are and judging

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what's going on, judgment is what we see.

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The more we can attend to the internal

perception about, let's just let the

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judgments go, just let them pass, let them

fade, is that they fade in our perceptual

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filters of what's going on around us.

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And that is so powerful.

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It's not easy.

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It takes daily practice because

the culture of immersing is

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one of opinions and judgments.

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For anyone who's self aware,

it's Utterly possible.

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And it's again, one of

the freedom pieces here.

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And finally to go into a really first

position, experience your body's response.

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So if you're having a fear or

worry what someone's thinking

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of you, what does your body do?

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What are the sensations?

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First and foremost, fear is natural.

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And if it's habitual for you, it's going

to come up every time you dare speak

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up or do something different, be the

leader you want to be, whatever that is.

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Notice the fear, sensation, notice

where it is in your body, and

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do nothing apart from observe.

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For me, it's very much centered in

my abdomen, in my, in sort of core

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center, that's where I feel it.

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For others I've worked with, I

remember Jo, it was very, in her

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shoulders, and there was a lot

of activity and tension there.

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And simply by allowing it to be, aware

of the breath, these Sensory signals

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that affect the goings back to the

brain start to change the internal

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environment of your body, brain, and

then that changes your, your experience.

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And then we realized that while

fear is maybe natural, habitual,

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it doesn't need to be absolute.

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And you can be careful

with what you're doing.

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We're not talking about being

reckless, but you can move

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forwards and make choices.

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And I would say that is

great self leadership.

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So if you want to be in a place of

leadership in your work, in your

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business, that is a very powerful way.

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So I trust all of that has been useful.

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The opinion of others, it's always

going to be there as a thought.

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It has its natural and a

valid reason to be there.

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But in today's world, move from

pariah to outlier in your mind.

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Set yourself free from

this pattern because...

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Generally, if you weren't afraid to do

stuff, there'd be so many things available

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and fear is natural, but fear does not

want to be absolute and restrictive.

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So I trust that is a, a little whirlwind

journey that might give you some insights,

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give you some tools to help you become.

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A little freer when that pattern of

worrying what other people think of you

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sneaks up in your mind, you can check

it and go, Ah, I know what this is.

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I know why this is, and I know

some strategies to deal with it.

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Thank you so much for listening.

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If you enjoyed the

episode, please subscribe.

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And if a friend would benefit from hearing

this, do send it on to them as well.

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If you would like to get in touch

yourself, then you can go to my website.

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Which is Sal Jeffries dot com,

spelt S A L J E F F E R I E S.

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Sal Jeffries dot com.

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Hit the get in touch link and there

you can send me a direct message.

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If you'd like to go one step further

and learn whether coaching can help

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you overcome a challenge or a block

in your life, then do reach out and

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I offer a call where we can discuss

how this may be able to help you.

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Until the next time, take care.